Spotify is rolling out AI protections for artists and producers, including disclosures for music created by generative AI and addressing the volume of spammy content.
While the streaming giant acknowledged the potential benefits of AI for music creators, Spotify said that “aggressively protecting against the worst parts of Gen AI is essential to enabling its potential for artists and producers.”
The announcement follows a report from Deezer that revealed that it is ingesting 30,000 fully AI-generated tracks every day, which represents more than 28% of the total daily delivery.
“At its best, AI is unlocking incredible new ways for artists to create music and for listeners to discover it,” said Spotify. “At its worst, AI can be used by bad actors and content farms to confuse or deceive listeners, push ‘slop’ into the ecosystem, and interfere with authentic artists working to build their careers. That kind of harmful AI content degrades the user experience for listeners and often attempts to divert royalties to bad actors.”
Spotify stressed that creative decisions on the use of AI are left to artists themselves, while the platform will continue to work to protect them against spam, impersonation and deception, and providing listeners with greater transparency about the music they hear.
A spokesperson for Universal Music Group said: “We welcome Spotify’s new AI protections as important steps forward consistent with our longstanding Artist Centric principles. We believe AI presents enormous opportunities for both artists and fans, which is why platforms, distributors and aggregators must adopt measures to protect the health of the music ecosystem in order for these opportunities to flourish.
“These measures include content filtering; checks for infringement across streaming and social platforms; penalty systems for repeat infringers; chain-of-custody certification and name-and-likeness verification. The adoption of these measures would enable artists to reach more fans, have more economic and creative opportunities, and dramatically diminish the sea of noise and irrelevant content that threatens to drown out artists’ voices.”
“Warner Music Group has been working with our distribution partners to set the right environment and ecosystem for AI, where the value of artistic creativity is protected," said a WMG spokesperson. "We appreciate and support Spotify on taking these steps to do just that and look forward to working with them on further safeguarding the rights of artists, songwriters and copyright owners.”
We are ready to power independent ventures for artists, managers and creative executives for the next decade and beyond
UMG spokesperson
In the past 12 months alone, Spotify has removed more than 75 million ‘spammy’ tracks. The focus of its AI policy work is as follows:
Stronger impersonation rules
Spotify has always had a policy against deceptive content, but AI tools have made generating vocal deepfakes of artists even easier.
As a result, Spotify has introduced a new impersonation policy that clarifies how it handles claims about AI voice clones (and other forms of unauthorised vocal impersonation), giving artists stronger protections and clearer recourse. Vocal impersonation is only allowed in music on Spotify when the impersonated artist has authorised the usage.
“Unauthorised use of AI to clone an artist’s voice exploits their identity, undermines their artistry, and threatens the fundamental integrity of their work,” added Spotify, while acknowledging that some artists may choose to license their voice to AI projects.
Spotify is also ramping up investments to protect against another impersonation tactic, where uploaders fraudulently deliver music (AI-generated or otherwise) to another artist’s profile across streaming services.
Folk artist Emily Portman was recently victim to AI-generated music, credited to a mystery producer, added under her profile.
“We’re testing new prevention tactics with leading artist distributors to equip them to better stop these attacks at the source,” said Spotify. “On our end, we’ll also be investing more resources into our content mismatch process, reducing the wait time for review, and enabling artists to report ‘mismatch’ even in the pre-release state.”
Music spam filter
Total music payouts on Spotify have grown from $1 billion in 2014 to $10 billion in 2024. While that’s good news for the music industry, it also encourages bad actors.
“Spam tactics, such as mass uploads, duplicates, SEO hacks, artificially short track abuse, and other forms of slop, have become easier to exploit as AI tools make it easier for anyone to generate large volumes of music,” said Spotify.
Left unchecked, this can dilute the royalty pool and impact attention for real artists.
This autumn, Spotify will roll out a new music spam filter that will identify uploaders and tracks engaging in these tactics, tag them, and stop recommending them.
The new music spam filter will protect against this behaviour and help prevent spammers from generating royalties that could be otherwise distributed to professional artists and songwriters.
This change is about strengthening trust across the platform, it’s not about punishing artists who use AI responsibly
Spotify
“We want to be careful to ensure we’re not penalising the wrong uploaders, so we’ll be rolling the system out conservatively over the coming months and continue to add new signals to the system as new schemes emerge,” said Spotify.
AI disclosures for music with industry-standard credits
Spotify has identified that listeners want more information about what they’re listening to and the role of AI technology in the music they stream.
The issue came to light earlier this year with the publicity surrounding The Velvet Sundown and questions over the role of AI, although their Spotify following has since declined.
For artists who are responsibly using AI tools in their creation process, there’s no way on streaming services for them to share if and how they’re using AI.
“We know the use of AI tools is increasingly a spectrum, not a binary, where artists and producers may choose to use AI to help with some parts of their productions and not others,” said Spotify. “The industry needs a nuanced approach to AI transparency, not forced to classify every song as either ‘is AI’ or ‘not AI’."
The company is now helping develop and will support the new industry standard for AI disclosures in music credits, developed through DDEX.
As this information is submitted through labels, distributors and music partners, it will begin displaying across the app.
“This standard gives artists and rights-holders a way to clearly indicate where and how AI played a role in the creation of a track – whether that’s AI-generated vocals, instrumentation, or post-production,” said Spotify. “This change is about strengthening trust across the platform. It’s not about punishing artists who use AI responsibly or down-ranking tracks for disclosing information about how they were made.”
Spotify is working alongside a wide range of industry partners, including: Amuse, AudioSalad, Believe, CD Baby, DistroKid, Downtown Artist & Label Services, Empire, Encoding Management Service, Fuga, IDOL, Kontor New Media, Labelcamp, NueMeta, Revelator, SonoSuite, Soundrop and Supply Chain.
“By supporting an industry standard and helping to drive its wide adoption, we can ensure listeners see the same information, no matter which service they’re listening on,” added Spotify. “And ultimately, that preserves trust across the entire music ecosystem, as listeners can understand what’s behind the music they stream. We see this as an important first step, which will undoubtedly continue to evolve.”
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